A review of tonight's "The Chicago Code" coming up just as soon as I wear a bullet-proof vest as a fashion statement...

"Justice first, and then my job." -Teresa

"St. Valentine's Day Massacre" was the second of this season's two episodes to not feature Delroy Lindo, and it was a potent reminder that Teresa Colvin's job carries many more headaches beyond whatever Alderman Gibbons is up to.

The episode did a very good job of illustrating the fishbowl Teresa works in, and then what happens when someone lights a fire under that bowl. Her opponents here aren't corrupt; they're just reactionary, or stubborn or, in the case of John Heard as Mayor McGinnis, unwilling to risk themselves politically. The call to Mancow's show comes from a rank-and-file cop who doesn't sound much different from the Commander of Mops and Brooms from the pilot, and once Teresa has to bail out on the show before she can rebut him - and then once the reason for her bailing out turns out to be such a hot-button case - it's like the union, the press, and the mayor can smell blood in the water. Suddenly, everyone who hasn't liked the way Teresa has been running things has cover under which they can attack her, or refuse to defend her, and things go from bad to worse when they try to stage a perp walk for a man in a coma.

All of that material was very well-handled, I thought, save for Jarek and Caleb's argument in the car, which illustrated how stubborn Jarek himself can be but which was also a phony conflict, since we know Caleb has the super's back as part of their unofficial four-person anti-Gibbons task force. And the massacre case itself was one of the better examples in a while of a situation where it absolutely makes sense for Teresa to have a detective she trusts who can parachute into any case in the city. The profile's so high, and the stakes for her job so big, that of course she'd want Jarek on it.

I don't know that the massacre plot itself was that effectively told, though. Aldis Hodge (Hardison from "Leverage") had a nice moment where Deion absorbs the news about his father's injury, but he and the writers never really sold Deion as the great imbecile Jarek and the other cops kept insisting that he was. And after setting up Bernadette as both the smart one in the family and a woman who knew how to take advantage of her position in a liberal judge's office, I can't imagine that she wouldn't have lawyered up the second she was placed under arrest.

I didn't think Teresa's speech at the union meeting was that fantastic, but I also don't think it was supposed to be. There's that moment halfway through where she can tell she's not getting through to anyone, and though the shift into more personal territory is an improvement, it still only barely gets her a win in a vote she might have won anyway after closing the massacre case. Jennifer Beals pretty clearly lost her voice at some point during the filming of this one, and aside from the way it came and went during the episode (because episodic TV tends to film out of sequence), it really helped her performance in showing just how much this day, and this job, wears on Teresa. I'd like to see some more stories, though, in which she's not quite so saintly or wise. Her intentions are always going to be good, but just as Jarek sometimes pisses people off with his attitude, there should be times where Teresa's inexperience in the job and/or her own sense of self-righteousness, winds up causing collateral damage. She's upset people, but outside of the Mops and Brooms scene from the pilot, we haven't gotten much of a sense of how and why, nor any suggestion at all that in some cases the anger might be deserved.

With so much happening with Teresa and Jarek this week, there wasn't much time for the B-story with Vonda and Isaac going up against "The Annaconda," played by Shawn Ryan's wife Cathy Cahlin Ryan (aka Vic Mackey's wife Corrine). Not sure if it would have been better at an expanded length or if I'm glad it was as brief as it was. Ryan had fun in her role - like Maury Levy on "The Wire," Anna is hateful but very smart and very good at what she does - but it's been a while since I've seen an interesting variation on the old "Rashomon" gimmick of seeing the same story from multiple viewpoints, and this wasn't it. This is the first time we see Isaac and Vonda's new relationship cause them a problem on the job, and I imagine it won't be the last, but this was predictable filler.

Where "The Shield" and "Terriers" both came out of the gate fully-formed (as, for the most part, did "The Unit," for what it was trying to do), "The Chicago Code" is a show that's still finding itself at this point. The good parts are very, very good - and I imagine they'll be even better the rest of the season, now that we'll get an uninterrupted string of Delroy Lindo - and the problematic parts all seem fixable. I'd like to see it stick around long enough to iron out the remaining kinks.

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

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I am starting to find Jason Clarke's Jarek Wysocki to be mostly annoying now. He just seems really whiny and a know-it-all. Besides the trouble he has created for himself (wife and fiance) I don't see how he is doing much good on the show.

This episode was uneven. The Vonda and Isaac stuff could have been a whole another episode. I like the potential that this relationship has but it was not used well in this episode at all.

Teresa Colvin looked great under pressure. She and Ronin Gibbons make this show. Thank god they did not feel the need to shoe horn in the undercover cop story line.

A very very busy episode. I can't wait until this show finds its footing.

Do you think an "Out of Gas" type episode can be done with The Chicago Code?

I'm simply commenting quickly to put forth my own experience of tonight's episode... but seeing Aldis Hodge was in it makes me rethink the decision just a bit due to my affinity for Leverage.

For the first time, I passed on watching or DVRing the show this evening. I feel like I'm watching a show that is "supposed to be good" rather than a program that actually is good. I love Delroy Lindo and he has kept me watching. Jason Clarke and Matt Lauria's respective characters have been interesting, but have simply not gone far enough. Beals does not work for me in the role. Something is just off about it, though I'm not sure what it is, because I do like her in other things. I don't feel that Season 2 looks remarkably likely and for a show to be several episodes in and still attempting to find its sweet spot is a problem at this point. Quite succinctly, there are too many other shows I'd rather watch or other things I'd rather do. I hate deserting shows but I question each week, though no episode has been "bad," why I'm really bothering each week. I think it has more to do with reading of Ryan's greatness for such a long time and giving it much more of a chance as a result of that fact alone. It doesn't feel original. I've seen this stuff before... and I've seen it executed better. Maybe I'll get back to it, but for me, I just didn't have time for The Chicago Code tonight.

This opinion has nothing to do with anyone else's and I hope everybody is digging the show and I'm alone with these thoughts. It's one man's opinion, but it seems to fit in this discussion.

Teresa knows how to work the politics of the Chicago Police so well that she's the first female superintendent (and quite young), but several times the flatfoots working the street must school her on Chicago Police Politics.

Jarek is a great detective who can read people well, but honestly doesn't know that his partner supports her or that his comments will be more nuanced than most.

The criminal brilliant mastermind starts beating one of her partners INSIDE THE POLICE STATION.

The police and media expect arrests in a quadruple murder MERE HOURS after it goes down?

I don't believe they gave any indication of how the lawyer found out the partners were sleeping with each other less than a week after they started.

And on and on.

I dig the series, but it's like they intentionally made an episode where nothing made any sense just to see if anyone noticed.

The lawyer saw the partners staring intimately into each others eyes while making sneaky hand contact. They made that part pretty obvious. Also, all she had to do was suspect and she could ask. Hell, she doesn't even have to suspect. She probably goes fishing with that every time there are coed partners in her cases.

And yeah, the mastermind was cool as a cucumber when Jarek visits her at the courthouse. But she makes a personal appearance at the station, basically begs to get arrested, then starts to ask for a lawyer and instead doesn't bother. Ooooook.

My wife and I just finished the latest season of Southland, and my wife asked me which one I liked best. My response was that Southland was what it is and this show is still trying to figure out what it is. My wife was like, "so that's a no"?

It's complicated. I like the actors. I love my hometown. I'm also used to watching a few eps of a new series and coming back later and see a ton of improvements from shaky beginnings. I hope that happens here.

It's show beautifully (seems to be a Fox trademark) but the locations throw me out of the show every week. You'd think the only way to get around Chicago was under L tracks or on Lake Shore Drive (shot from the water with downtown as a backdrop, of course), and every walk is over a Chicago river bridge. Also, every crime happens in the World's Most Unlikely Crime Spots. And I'm looking at downtown Wabash and they're telling me it's Lincoln Park....but all the victims live in the hood. So why not have them get shot in the hood? There aren't multiple homicides in either place. It's like they are only picking locations that my wife has seen (we live in her native Los Angeles) on Chicago episodes of House Hunters.

Still, there's a lot to like about the show and I hope it settles down now that the writers and actors should have their footing with the characters. And I really hope the purge the need to have a Big Case and get it solved at the end of the hour. Too many of these cases have a career super criminal that turns rat at the drop of a hat so we can wrap it up in 44 minutes. That's not working for me.

I thought this was a great episode. I do get all the critiques laid out here (Jarek and Calebâ€™s argument, the â€œmastermindâ€ not getting an attorney), but they didn't bug my while I was watching it, especially the attorney part. Most cop shows have to deal with that failure of logic, otherwise they canâ€™t have their ace detectives getting dramatic confessions.I enjoy watching Teresa in action as she butts heads with power, and I thought it made a lot more sense for her to be so involved in this case as opposed to last week's heat wave episode. I'm also curious to see how her new driver's character develops - he does a nice job of keeping her in check when she needs it. The only character I don't like is Isaac. Isaac is such a loose cannon, I needed the writers to do a much better job of laying out why Vonda would a) be attracted to him and b) act on that attraction given the inevitable risk and tension it will cause. She's smarter than that.Overall, there's plenty to keep me tuned in while the show finds its footing.

The show is just all over the place. One week it's clearly an ensemble show that wants to show a big picture of Chicago PD, but then it's back to Jarek being the main focal point. Other weeks it's a show entirely about Superintendent Colvin.

Also, Gibbons is just too good a character to have around sporadically. I really wish they'd just gone full out and dedicated most of the season to the conflict between Gibbons and the task-force. If they had a full 22 episodes I'd be fine with exploring how the City of Chicago works, but you've only got 13 hours to tell a story. You need to have your most compelling pieces on the screen as much as possible.

I hope they finish strong with the last batch of episodes. This week felt like very ordinary cop-show territory. And Jennifer Beals doesn't have to gravitas to pull off this role. I didn't really notice that she lost her voice because she has a really soft voice even when the character is supposed to be pissed. I never bought her as a "tough broad."

Simple comment from a simple girl: I love this show, and look forward to it every week. I enjoy the characters and their ongoing conflicts, as well as the "crime of the week." Great cast, love Shawn Ryan. Hope it sticks around.

I thought it was an alright episode, but completely hated Theresa's speech. The idea that she would make one without making any mention of the fact that the demotions and reassignments were due to poor performance and corruption, which all of the good cops can certainly understand but many don't know - was just ridiculous. Instead she gave an ill-conceived super-sappy speech that didn't actually say anything to address the issues the cops seem to have with her. It really put a damper on the whole episode for me.

I only recently discovered this show and had not read a word about it. Anything from Shawn Ryan is better than the sameness of all those procedural shows. I'm enjoying it so far although I didn't understand the need for the Vonda-Isaac thing.

I don't know if this episode was weaker than pervious episodes, or if I just realized that the show was as a whole weaker than I had thought, but I really didn't care for this ep.

Teresa's speech was the crowning moment of suck that codified this episode and show as something that is far below the quality of other shows I watch these days.

I guess my view of The Chicago Code could be best described as a recipe.
1 Part the Wire + 1 Part the Shield + 4 Parts Water = The Chicago code.

I just don't care for so much water, even if there are buried flavors I like. I'll give it another episode, and maybe even the rest of the season, but unless something awesome happens it will not make my Tivo queue for next season.